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Traffic conversion is one of the most complex issues digital marketers face. Sure, it’s easy enough to get eyes on a website using PPC ads – but what happens once your dream customers have visited your website? How do you convince them to level-up from prospects into paying customers?
If you’re new to the idea or turning organic traffic into qualified leads for your business’s sales team, don’t fret: this blog post is here to help.
We’ve compiled a list of 11 handy-dandy tips for converting organic traffic into qualified leads that we’re certain will help your business make more money from the traffic you already have arriving at your website.
Before we dive into the tips, you may wonder why should you focus on organic traffic conversions.
Well, if your business’s goal isn’t traffic for the sake of traffic – but traffic that’s excited and willing to level up from visitor to qualified lead to paying customer – you would do well to consider focusing your marketing efforts on attracting organic traffic to your business’s website.
Also, organic traffic converts the best. In our recent poll, almost two-thirds of respondents stated that organic traffic converts better than other types of traffic.
Given that organic traffic is poised to bear the most fruit for your business, it’s only rational that you’d want to learn about the best ways to make sure super-valuable organic traffic does as much for your business as it possibly can, right? That’s why we’ve collected these actionable tips designed to help you maximize your organic traffic conversions from prospect to paying customer.
Improve & Grow’s Justin Mosebach says, “If your company website has a blog, make sure that you’re adding links in the blog post that point to relevant product/service pages and/or a special offer. It’s common for businesses to get a lot of organic traffic to their blog posts, but if they’re not pointing users to their service/product landing pages, they’re losing out on qualified leads.”
If your website receives traffic from a search engine query related to a particular problem, there’s no reason not to direct your website visitors to a page on how your business can solve that problem.
“One effective way to convert organic traffic into leads is to install a free live chat solution. There are several software companies that offer free live chat widgets that can be installed on your website, and prompt visitors to share basic contact information in addition to what they are hoping to accomplish on your website. Making the website interactive and engaging can have a material positive impact on lead conversion rate,” says Software Pundit’s Bruce Hogan.
Mudassir Ahmed of Blogging Explained adds, “Live chat is an untapped potential strategy to convert your organic traffic into qualified leads. Chat option makes the visitor stay on your web page for a long time and increases the chance of conversion. By sending personalized messages via chat, you’re triggering the visitor’s sense to engage, learn more about your product and eventually buy from you. When you are offline, it can still capture the prospect’s contact details and their enquiry.
You can even tap into your analytics to learn individual web page’s performance so that you can be prepared with more interactive and related questions to ask your visitors.”
By adding a live chat widget to your website, you’re making it super easy for your website visitors to contact your sales team the moment they find your business – without the chance of losing these visitors’ interest when they have to wait several hours for an email response or a response to the voicemail they’ve left your sales rep.
There’s just one caveat: when you implement a chatbot, be sure that its programmed responses are appropriate for prospects at whatever stage typically visit the webpage the chatbot is installed on.
Contentki’s Anna Rubkiewicz, “In my experience, chatbots and semi-automated chat messages can be a great way to boost lead conversion. However, under one condition – you need to understand user context for each action or part of the website they’re visiting.
Firstly, you must determine how far down the funnel your leads are based on their on-site behavior. How long does their session last? Which pages are they on? What type of content on your blog are they reading – purely educational, i.e., targetted at leads in the awareness stage, or those in the consideration stage, like product comparison? These and other insights will help you select the right CTA or question to display to users.”
Finally, Adam Rizzieri of Agency Partner Interactive notes that “If that organic traffic is coming from a known source, proper utilization of a chatbot can help engage and convert that traffic. We commonly utilize a chatbot that offers a custom experience to visitors that come from known organic sources. This allows us to rapidly capture our site user’s attention and gives us a better opportunity to serve a unique value proposition.”Editor’s note: Use marketing reporting software to track the effectiveness of your chatbot and adjust its responses based on user engagement and conversion rates.
If you want to understand how your visitors are behaving on your landing pages, there are several on-page events and metrics you can track from Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console that will help:
And more…
Now you can benefit from the experience of our SEO and website conversion experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important metrics for monitoring your landing page performance. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console accounts with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
“One of the most effective ways to convert organic traffic into qualified leads is through email marketing. You can do this by putting an opt-in form at the bottom of your content pieces.
I’ve found this is one of the best ways to generate qualified (emphasis on “qualified”) leads because the only people who will see your opt-in are the people who have consumed your content in its entirety. To me, quality is more important than quantity. That’s why I personally put my email opt-in forms at the bottom of my blog post,” says The Advisor Coach LLC’s James Pollard.
Email marketing is a great way to keep in touch with people interested in your business. The best part is, of course, that you control your own subscriber list, as opposed to relying on a social media giant.
Sparkr Marketing’s Wendy Margolin says, “Social media ads on every major channel allow you to retarget traffic to your website with a pixel. You can track any number of events happening with your website traffic and then target those visitors with specific ads on social media. Eventually, you want to offer them a helpful resource in exchange for their email. Once they do that and you nurture your audience with emails, they are more likely to buy from you.”
If you plan on using PPC methods, retargeting the organic traffic you already have is a smart choice. Retargeted lists typically perform better than simply targeting cold lists – and retargeting ads aimed at people who’ve already found your website through organic search mean you’re targeting people who’ve already demonstrated interest in your industry.
Jeff Ferguson of Amplitude Digital adds, “Most of the time, blog traffic doesn’t convert into a lead, at least not directly. Therefore, the best way to convert organic traffic into a qualified lead is by way of a retargeting campaign that finds the user elsewhere during their consumer journey that reminds them of just how awesome your brand really is.
Mxt Media’s TJ Kelly says, “If the topic of your blog is ‘10 ideas to Increase Business,’ then offer visitors an EVEN BETTER lead magnet/asset download: ‘Download our 25 ideas to Increase Business PDF…’
The increase from 10 in the blog post to 25 in the asset entices users to grab even more value through the download.”
It’s human nature to love the idea of “more.” Why not benefit from that in your own traffic conversion efforts?
ELM Learning’s Greg Kozera agrees and adds, “When you need qualified leads to speed up your sales funnel, converting organic traffic can be imperative. So, that means it’s time to create an eBook, or another important piece of content, such as research or a white paper. Allow access to this content with an email address. You can then use this as a qualified lead for your next email marketing strategy, or newsletter. This is commonly referred to as ‘gated content.’”
If someone wants one of the informational assets on your website badly enough, they’ll be highly motivated to give your business their website in return for that asset. That’s a sign they’re interested in the solutions that your business might offer to their problems.
BizcaBOOM’s Michael Monyak says, “One of the most effective ways to convert organic traffic into qualified leads is to always be improving your website by adding in new videos and content. This helps to keep users aware that you still exist and see the value of what you do. Start by adding an opt-in to a blog page or a lead magnet to put traffic into your email list or marketing funnel, because not all users are ready to buy right away, and later down the road, they will consider buying from you when they feel like you have provided them a great amount of value.”
When your organic traffic creates repeat website visitors, keep those visitors interested in your business. Consistently adding new content is a great way to maintain fascination with your business’s website and nurture visitors over time.
Related: 25 Tips for Updating Old Blog Posts for SEO & Boosting Organic Traffic
Markethire’s Darren Litt says, “SEO only brings people to your website, but to turn those visitors into qualified leads you need to have quality content on your page.
Ensure you really know who your ideal targets are by doing market research and determine what kind of content they want to see. Top your landing page with an eye-catching headline and keep the content concise and conversational. Create blog posts that give real value to your readers so that once they are on your page, they stay there. Post testimonials or case studies on your website to gain new client’s trust.
Finally, and possibly most importantly, be sure to sprinkle your call to action button throughout your page (a recommended 4 times), to give your visitors the chance to skip and skim through your content and go directly to the sale.”
Make sure that the website your organic traffic arrives at is a website worth spending time exploring. When your website content offers value to your business’s prospects, you’ll find that they return to your business’s website – and eventually become customers, leaving prospect status behind.
“In our experience converting organic traffic into leads starts with attracting the right audience with the right topics,” says Kateryna Reshetilo of Greenice.
Reshetilo continues, “We always track all ‘entry pages’ and analyze which ones generate the most leads. Some leads convert right on those pages while others further down the funnel. We use this data to see which content attracts the most leads to produce more of such pages and improve existing ones that already work but have more potential.
To give you an example, when we had just started our blog, our first articles were about programming and technology. But later, we’ve realized that such content doesn’t generate leads, while articles with a more business perspective on how to build a particular type of website or software are the most lead-generating. So we’ve doubled down on topics like ‘How to build a SaaS software’ or ‘6 things you need to know before building a marketplace.
This approach allowed us to turn our blog into a lucrative source of leads.” Use this lead generation dashboard to monitor the number of leads that come from your blogging efforts.
Related: 30 Ways to Come Up With Great Blog Topic Ideas
Attention Insight’s Darius Jokubaitis says, “Studies have shown that social proof is not only effective for persuading people to take the desired action, but it is also one of the critical assets that push for high-conversions.
Even if a brand’s unique value proposition is perfect it may not be enough to secure a purchase. By seeing other people have enjoyed the product or service, customer doubt fades away. Well-integrated social proof is what backs up your unique value proposition, builds trust, and encourages conversion. You should highlight testimonials, integrate review websites such as Capterra or Trustpilot, and display quotes from news media.”
“In my opinion, the most effective way to convert organic traffic into qualified leads is to work on the reviews and testimonies along with the content. You may be giving enough attention to draw your audience to your product pages by content and SEO, and you may obtain success in that. However, if the reviews on your pages display a shortage of people’s trust, all that effort to engage your viewers will be for nothing,” chimes in Stewart Dunlop from PPCGenius.
Dunlop continues, “That’s why it is important to encourage your customers to leave a review of your products and services after buying. If you have worked well to keep the high-quality of your product, you should be able to have satisfied customers. The testimony of their satisfaction on your website will work as word-of-mouth marketing, which is a remarkably effective way to convert potential customers into recurring customers.”
Once organic traffic lands on your website, you should put your business’s best foot forward by offering up all the kind things your current and past clients and customers have said about your business. It’s sure to make a great impression on people considering becoming your business’s customer!
How do your website’s users experience it? User experience (or UX) is important to your business’s website’s traffic conversion efforts. When you streamline UX and create an easy-to-follow path that directs your website visitors where you want them to go, it becomes easier to convert organic traffic.
Paul La Vigne of DVS Marketing & Advertising proposes a two-step approach. She describes it as follows: “I’ve found a two-step approach works well when converting organic traffic into qualified leads. Step one is to target only the most relevant keywords and to try ranking for topics you can confidently demonstrate your expertise in. This may bring in a narrower group of users from organic search, but these users are more likely to be searching for the value you can offer (and more likely to convert into leads). The second step is to design your site’s UX to encourage self-guided exploration while also naturally prompting the user to take the specific actions that will make them a qualified lead.”
Converting the organic traffic your business’s website receives from visitor to prospect to – hooray! – a paying customer should be one of your sales teams’ top priorities.
In a recent Databox poll, we discovered that sales and marketing teams tend to have traffic-to-lead conversion rates of 1-3% OR over 10% — with few teams falling in the middle of these two opposite rates.
Perhaps some sales and marketing teams are doing all the right things and others are lacking in their traffic conversion efforts; perhaps there’s another explanation.
Following the tips in this blog post, however, is likely to have your business’s sales and marketing teams winning traffic conversion trophies and taking full advantage of everything organic traffic has to offer.
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Mariana Santiago is a copywriter, email marketer, theatre geek, and adventurer. While she's redoing her website, you can find her on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you're looking for someone to obsess over the power of CRM-ESP integrations with, she'd be happy to oblige.
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